While much of campus melts in the heat and humidity of July,
five researchers will migrate south to winter in Santiago, Chile, to develop a
startup venture aimed at providing sanitation to remote and low-income communities.

Sanivation was one of 110 companies awarded $40,000 from
Startup Chile, a six-month Chilean government program encouraging
entrepreneurial activity in the South American country.

“They’re trying to have a kind of Silicon
Valley in Santiago,” said Andrew Foote, a 2011 civil and environmental
engineering graduate, GTRI research scientist and member of the Sanivation
team.

Sanivation began as a collaboration among the Georgia Tech
Research Institute (GTRI), Georgia Tech Engineers Without Borders (EWB-GT), Emory
University and a Bolivian nonprofit. EWB-GT students have made two trips to
Bolivia to research and test prototypes of a latrine that kills disease-causing
pathogens using solar energy. The waste can then be used for crop fertilization.
Sanivation’s research shows that using this type of waste as fertilizer can
increase crop yields by up to 50 percent.

In its current state, Sanivation has
two proposed products: SanoLatrine and the SunSeat. SanoLatrine is designed for
lower-income areas, while the SunSeat is for places with lower infrastructure
in place, such as in mountains or parks. Both function on solar technology in
places where conventional sewage treatment is often not affordable or feasible.

“What’s unique about Chile is that it
has both target markets — it has a lot of parks, between mountains and oceans,”
said Foote. “We hope to develop both products there.” Sanivation President
Chris Quintero, a mechanical engineering major, said that the exact
specifications of the products might change along the way, but that the
sanitation focus will remain.

Foote and Quintero will be accompanied
by recent Tech alumni Sean Kolk and Emily Woods, as well as Nick van Vliet, a
friend and colleague from Emory. The team hopes to have its planning and
research fostered by the hub of technology development and entrepreneurship created
by Startup Chile. Quintero had intended to graduate from Tech in December, but
will now postpone that milestone for at least a semester to work on Sanivation.

“I’m stoked about the team we have, and
it will be exciting to meet so many other entrepreneurs and ambitious people,”
he said.

Meanwhile, students on campus will
continue to research and work on the project from Atlanta. “The relationship
between EWB-GT, GTRI and Sanivation will be integral — there are lots of
ways to collaborate there, and we’ll have a support network and a group of Tech
students engaged at home,” Foote said.

This is not the first time the solar sanitation project has
earned recognition recently. At the National Inventors and Innovators Alliance’s
Open Minds competition in March, the group earned runner-up for the People’s
Choice award and first place in the event’s video competition. It has also
garnered interest and attention from global health nonprofits.

“There seems to be a lot of energy
behind sanitation now,” Foote said, who mentioned that it was also discussed at
this year’s World Health Organization conference. “We hope to come up with the
implementation plan and generate enthusiasm around Sanivation in Chile, and
then go into the fundraising stage.”

The team departs the second week of
July and will post regular updates on its progress at www.sanivation.com.